It's A Sonic Thing
by crayondelune
Summary: This story picks up after the events taken place in The Big Bang and A Christmas Carol. Rose is in the alternate universe with Doctor 10.5, but how does she really feel? And what will happen if her world collides with Amy and The Doctor's? **Completely AU, disregards a lot of Steven Moffat's additions to the show in recent years but everything is canon up to The Eleventh Hour**
1. Chapter 1

Rose

I woke up again today to the awful sound of a screeching alarm clock. I had been waking this way five days a week for the last three months, but I still knew I'd never, ever get used to it. Refusing to open my eyes, I blindly swung my arm out to the bedside table behind me, my hand landing on the snooze button. Pulling my arm back under the warm duvet after reaching into the cold always seemed to put me right back to sleep.

Yawning groggily, I rolled myself closer to the warm body lying next to me and rested my cheek against its smooth chest. I usually didn't like laying on him this way. I despised hearing his heart beat. The man wedged underneath my face and arm sniffed and shifted in his sleep, pulling me in close. I hated him sleeping, too. These were reminders of bad things.

Grumpy now and still mostly asleep, I rolled back over onto my own pillow and faced the table. Forcing one eye open, I was nearly blinded by the luminous green numbers on the clock in front of my face. 8:25, it was flashing. I knew the awful sound was coming again at 8:27—the snooze ends every nine minutes—so I reached out again and turned the whole thing off. _Let him sleep, I'm up, I'm up._

I used to look forward to waking up every morning. That was back when every single day of my life was a kind of sci-fi adventure. That was ages and ages ago. Now the only things consciousness brought me were coffee, work, headaches, and more coffee. Groaning, I rolled out of the bed and into my nearby robe and slippers. Leaning back over the bed gently, I gave my boyfriend a peck on his big old forehead and rumpled his rumply hair before scooting my feet out of the bedroom and down the hall to the kitchen of our small flat.

Start the coffee; let the water heat up; step into a steamy shower; scrub away at the last dregs of sleep on my skin and in my eyes; dry my long, blond hair; dress in nice jeans and a blouse for my job in the shop; pour the coffee into a thermos and trudge back down the hall to kiss John goodbye. This was my routine. It all took about twenty minutes, leaving me ten to catch the bus into the proper part of town.

I suppose I was lucky to even have a job, but I didn't _feel _particularly lucky every morning, coming in the back dock of the building, tossing my bag and coat into a small room with probably twenty other people's belongings, sliding my time card, and going on to do the same exact things I did the day before in the same exact place I did them. I'd never get used to it. Sure, it was the same I'd been doing for most of my life. But ever since my hiatus from reality about six years ago, going back to this boring life felt like the end of the world every single day.

All right, I know I'm sounding pretty depressing right now. Welcome to my life, though. Sure, sometimes I really am happy. My dad's alive, my mum's happy, I have the most adorable little brother I could've asked for, and a man who loves me more than his own life. Of _course _there are happy times. Christmas this year, when the whole family got together, exchanged gifts and ate holiday ham while hearing John and my dad go back and forth, each trying to tell a funnier joke than the last. I was happy then.

Mornings really were the only times this was hard for me. John would still be sleeping, giving me time to think and brood over the dreams I had every night. Most mornings, I'd wake to what sounded in my dreams like the _whoosh, whoosh, whoosh_ of a far away yet all too familiar time ship, only to regain awareness and realize it was that wretched alarm clock. Most of my dreams revolved around the forbidden. The things we don't talk about aloud, for fear of denting the façade of perfect happiness we put out. But both of us knew what monsters I dreamed of when I'd wake us both up screaming in the night. Not Daleks, not Cybermen, no. Just my own monsters; the demons _he _left behind.

Shaking my head with the thought that I could shake the whole feeling I get when I think about him, I took a big gulp of my now-cold black coffee, and left the thermos behind to go start on whatever work they'd have me do today. Christmas had just ended, and mostly we were just tearing down displays and putting up new ones for Valentine's Day. I checked in with my immediate boss, and made my way over to the corner of the store dedicated to lingerie with a big stack of cardboard hearts.

I was prepared for passing the next seven hours in ways similar to this, but it wasn't meant to be.

As I stood up on the top rung of the step-ladder and unfastened a great billboard featuring mistletoe and a couple of naughty elves in skimpy underwear, I reached just a bit too far and the ladder slipped out from under me, flying in the opposite direction. I grabbed the top of the sign, but it was already unhooked on the other end and just tore down with me as I fell to the ground. With a loud thump and clattering of the ladder, I landed on the floor four feet down from where I had been standing.

I didn't really hurt myself much; just a twisted wrist from trying to catch myself and a much bruised ego. Without standing up, I looked around the area and was somewhat relieved that no one had been there to see. It must have been too early in the day for underwear shopping. I really didn't want to admit to my superior that I had toppled off of a ladder and shredded one of their biggest Christmas displays in the process, so I scooted myself to where my back was against the wall and tried to nurse my wounded wrist.

Of course this would happen to me, wouldn't it? Because nothing can ever go smoothly for Rose Tyler. Not anymore. Not now that my perfect world had been pulled out from under my feet for a second time. It had been two years since the last time I'd seen Badwolf Bay, but as the tears forced their way out of my squeezed-shut eyes, I knew by the crushing feeling of _nothing ever goes right, ever_ that it didn't matter. It was one wound that would haunt me no matter how much time had passed.

Biting my lip and willing myself to not let out any audible sobs down on the floor there in the lingerie department, I let a few tears escape without a fight, and softly hit the back of my head on the wall behind me a couple of times. I hoped again, futilely, that I could shake the memories straight out of my head. The third time I hit the wall, though, the memories still bit into me like an endless winter's ice around my heart, and I heard a slow _crack_. Maybe it was my heart finally shattering from the cold.

Or maybe it was the wall behind me, I realized as I turned my head around slowly to see that things _actually could _get worse than they were already. For right before my eyes, where there was once an elfy billboard, there was now a great crack opening, painfully slow, in the shop's wall. Surely my head couldn't have… Of course it could. I'm Rose Tyler. Of course I have the ability to fuck everything up with a single touch—the ability to create a gaping crack nearly five feet long in a solid wall with just the touch of my skin.

Feeling the crushing sensation starting up again, I put my face in my hands and let out a sob. I didn't care who found me or who heard me. Things couldn't get worse.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Wow, this is going to be a very short chapter (sorry!), but I wanted to leave it off where it leaves off! And I wanted to submit the next piece. I'll be getting the next one in within a couple of days, possibly tomorrow. Feedback would be awesome! THANK YOU for reading! ~**

Sitting there on the floor, back to the wall, face in my hands, I cried about everything. I cried about how much I hated my job, my nine to five life; I cried about how badly I wanted to love John the way he deserved; I cried about the crack in the wall and my twisted wrist and the gum I'd stepped in on the bus. I grazed the edges of the forbidden memories in my heart; a few tears slipped between the bricks in that thick barrier as well. I was too involved in my own self pity to even recognize that I'd been stopped there for probably long enough to be noticed on camera.

I didn't care. I could hear only…

Waves of unwanted recollection washed over my clouded mind and all I could hear was him.

_Rose, you've got to stop this. You've got to stop this now. You've got the entire vortex running through your head. You're gonna burn._

A wet-sounding sniff disrupted the tense air around the aching body I'd detached myself from.

_I have to live on. Alone. That's the curse of the Time Lord._

As the bricks crumbled around the once-safe zone of my own head, no protection for my heart, one more loud heave escaped my salty lips and I knew I _would _burn if I kept recalling these words—that voice.

_Is that what you're going to do to me?_

_No… not to you._

I wiped the pools of tears from the lines of my face and cracked an eye open. I had to distract myself and snap out of this before someone—

"Is there someone there?" My cruel fate, the nemesis of justice and fairness, demanded of course that I be caught. I wiped the rest of my face quickly with my sleeve and glanced around for the source of the voice. It was a child's voice, a girl's. She hadn't seen me, and I couldn't see her, probably just looking for her mommy. I got up on my knees to fumble with the torn poster I'd taken down in my fall, and thought the girl must have moved on, but when I heard her speak again it was as though she was talking to me a foot in front of my face. "Hello? Are you alright? Have you been crying?"

Surely I was delusional, because the voice couldn't have been coming from there… the crack in the wall. I shook my head and twisted around to search again for the girl with the voice, but nobody was around for meters in either direction. Risking the appearance of being _even more_ crazy than I surely already looked on the surveillance tapes, I leaned close to the wall, to the crack in it and saw nothing. I whispered, "Hello?"

"Hi. Are you okay? I heard you crying? Who are you?" the response was immediate, and _definitely_ coming from the crack in the wall. But it couldn't be, could it? It was the outside wall… of a second-story department. I really was losing it, then. I'd kept my cool watching the destruction of the planet Earth, five billion years in the future; I'd saved the world my share of times and I'd survived the absorption of the _entire time vortex_ and _this _was how I was going to lose my mind—by falling from a step-ladder in an underwear corner? I didn't know what else to do. I answered her.

"Hullo? Is there someone really there? How are you out there?" I spoke quietly, preferring not to be taken from work that day in a padded white van.

"I'm not out anywhere, really. I'm standing right here in my bedroom. Where are you coming from this time?" The thoughts didn't really all make sense put together, but _hell, I'll bite._

"I'm in a shop. In London. I work here… My name's Rose."

"Usually the things in my wall don't talk back to me… I'm glad you are, Rose. You're not scary like the others. Just sadder," the girl said. Somehow kids have this way of being so naïve and so much more honest than any grown person, all at once. I supposed, if I was going crazy, a young girl really would be the ideal companion… _Companion_.

"**Rose to guest services, please. Rose to guest services,"** wafted from the intercoms, interrupting the cleverly placed songs and ads on the store's radio station. Crap, surely someone had seen me, either falling, breaking things, lying on the floor, talking to myself, or all of the above. Likely, the last one. That's just me.

I got up off of my knees and brushed the carpet dust from my jeans, just crossing my fingers that I wouldn't be written up for slacking off or breaking the wall (though I still don't see how I could've been responsible for _that_). I didn't think to check back with the girl in (the crack) my head, but as I was bent over to pick up the cardboard hearts that were my only charge still intact, she checked back with me.

"Rose? Are you still there?"

"I—ah, I'll… be back. Later… what did you say your name was?" I asked, feeling stupid for even feeling rude leaving. It was all in my head! I just didn't know what else to say… This was dumb. I finished picking up the posters off the floor and turned to walk away. Just before I was out of earshot, I heard the small voice answer me.

"Amelia. I'm Amelia Pond."


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: I had pretty much given up on this story during a major bout of writer's block about two years ago, but through all that time I have been receiving email notifications at least once every few weeks about someone new having favorited it or written a review, and I always go and read them and consider continuing the story but usually end up not feeling motivated enough. Well, it took two years, but I did finally get inspired to update it. Just look at it this way: that's two whole years of Doctor/Rose angst just building up in my heart with no outlet until now. The way the story is taking me now is not exactly the same place as I had originally intended when I started the fic, but it'll definitely be an adventure (this is the first AU I've written for any fandom, normally I would write prequels or sequels but keep everything essentially canon, so please bear with me here. :) and feel free to come follow me on tumblr, too (bobbypinroachclip).**

"Rose!"

_Raxacoricofallapatorius._ Lather. _Raxacoricofallapatorius._ Scrub. _Raxacoricofallapatorius._ Rinse. _Raxacoricofallapatorius._ Lather. _Raxacoricofallapa-_

"ROSE!"

I rolled my eyes and set the plate in the dish drainer. I'd heard my mum's wailing the first time 'round, but thought she'd give it up if I ignored her. Obviously, I'd underestimated the gravity of the situation. Eyes closed, I leaned my face forward toward the sink, letting the steam from the hot, soapy water warm my nose and fill my lungs. Shutting off the water and wiping my pruney hands roughly down the legs of my jeans, I turned from the kitchen and followed the sound of my mother's voice down the hall of my small apartment into the bedroom.

"RO-"

"I'm right here, Mum," I cut her off. The words came out sounding lifeless, but not harsh. I just didn't have the energy to bother much with emphasis or expression lately. She jumped and looked up at me, as if I was the last thing she'd expected to be standing at the door. She was looking pretty rough, sitting on the floor, surrounded by boxes and bags half full and heaping piles of clothes waiting to be sorted through. I'd been found out at last. John and I had been moved into this apartment for nearly four months and I hadn't brought myself to unpack anything I didn't absolutely need, so finally she had taken it upon herself to invade on a day I had off work and do it for me.

"Oh, Rose," she sighed in that raking nasally voice I'd come to love over the past two and a half decades but somehow still managed to make me cringe or roll my eyes every time. I knew she didn't actually have anything to say, she was just silently scolding me for failing at real life. She looked up at me and held up a pair of faded blue jeans that didn't fit me anymore, as if to say just by showing them to me that she knows I wouldn't be able to wear them, so why, oh why, are they balled up in a trash bag full of other clothing I actually wear?

I could have easily said something snarky-I didn't ask or particularly want her to be rummaging through my stuff-but at that moment my eyes fell on the bed behind her, where, rumpled and nearly forgotten, lay a light pink zip-up hoodie, normal to anyone else but whose every stitch reeked with memories I'd trained myself to glance over, whose scent-imagined, probably, now-made my head spin uncomfortably. My breathing became heavy very suddenly and I felt like I needed to sit down. I tried to roll my eyes at my mom as I pivoted out of my doorway and turned down the hall toward the living room of our small apartment.

Lost and buried words whispered in my head as I collapsed onto the couch. _Humans decay. You wither and you die. Imagine watching that happen to someone that you l-_ God, if only he'd finished that sentence. If only... Maybe now he wouldn't be alone. And maybe I wouldn't feel so alone. God, I know it's selfish to wish things like that... I mean... John wouldn't even exist... Who knows, maybe my mum wouldn't even have come over to this world with me. Pete's World, we called it. What-if's are so bad for me, I could get lost in them for hours. I can remember every word the man ever said to me, and I've had way too much time to overanalyze each one. _You can spend the rest of your life with me. But I can't spend the rest of mine with you,_he'd said a long time ago-years before he knew exactly how true the statement would ring.

I sound pathetic, I know. But I'm not just some dramatic girl mooning over an ex or a missed opportunity. I lost my future. I was the luckiest girl in the world to have been handed the excitement and the adventure and the opportunities I was given travelling with him. Because of him and my life with him I have a father, something I'd wished for every day for twenty years; because of him I've seen the future of humanity, seen the end of the world, seen time itself. All that is gone, now, and the man I love sealed me out of his world permanently... So yeah, I'm depressed, sue me.

I pushed the sound of his voice to the back of my mind with great effort and shoved myself up from the couch. I have John. It should feel the same. It should feel better. Should. So it will, I'll make it work. I tell myself every day that I can make it work and I do. What's not to be happy about with John? He remembers all of it, everything that I miss. He's got the same face, the same mannerisms, the same whack fashion sense. I remind myself of all of this because I have to-because I have to recall their similarities to push away thoughts of their differences, to pretend things can be the same again. Yep, that's me: cruel, depressed, delusional Rose Tyler. Sometimes I'm glad he can't see me now.

I got up to go back to the kitchen where I'd been cleaning dishes, but on my way out of the room something caught my eye. On one side of our cramped living room we had a two and a half person couch, the door to the hallway, and a standing lamp with a table built into it. There was a coffee table in the middle of the room and the opposite wall featured a small tv in one corner and fake fireplace with a painting, large for the size of the room, of three deer running through a forest hanging over it. The painting was something the previous tenants had left hanging there and we'd not had anything to replace it with so it had just become part of our décor. Normally I'd have just walked right past it into the kitchen without a second glance, but normally there wouldn't have been a huge crack running all the way across the painting and clear out onto the wall as if they were one surface.

I'd seen that crack before, a few weeks back... the same shape, size... but it couldn't be, because I'd been concussed that day at work. I'd been delusional.

I took a step toward the crack and reached out my hand, but for some reason didn't touch the broken wall in front of me. What could have caused this? I hadn't felt an earthquake. And how could the crack be on both the wall and the painting as one? Quickly, I ran into the kitchen and started pulling things out of the cupboards that lined the opposite side of that same wall. I felt the surface there behind the shelves, ran my hands across the smooth wood and the wall behind it showing no trace of structural damage. Impossible... The word used to not be a part of my vocabulary, but the time for all things possible was something I'd accepted I'd never get back. Didn't mean I was happy about it, but I had accepted that it was a thing of the past. But this... my heart skipped a beat.

Coming back into the living room, I stood directly in front of the crack. Maybe I hadn't been hallucinating that day in the shop after all... Maybe I couldn't have my life back, but maybe the way I had been living it for the past few months didn't have to be the only other option. I still felt the constant heartache of missing what was before, but for the first time in a while, I simultaneously felt hope that my life here in Pete's World didn't necessarily have to be as boring as waking up to an alarm every morning, doing my best to love my boyfriend while both of us knew he was my second choice, working 40 hours a week, paying bills, doing dishes... It may sound human and natural and normal, but natural, normal, and human are all things that are just not good enough for me after everything I've seen.

With this hope in mind and little fear of losing what I had built here, I let go of whatever had been holding me back from touching the crack and again reached out my hand. When my fingertips were about to touch the surface of it, the crack suddenly widened to nearly two inches and a very soft light slipped through. I pulled my arm back to my body but leaned my face precariously close to the light and closed one eye, attempting to focus in, trying to see something.

"Where are you?" The girl's voice was a little louder this time, as though she were in the room with me, but with the same Scottish accent I'd heard before in the crack. _Ha!_I exhaled excitedly, taking this to mean I hadn't been making all of this up because of a head injury a few weeks ago. I put my hand over my mouth to stop myself making too much noise and risk my mum coming to check on me out here.

"Amelia?" I asked in a loud whisper, recalling that to be the name of the little girl who'd spoken to me at work that day a few weeks ago. No answer. I got as close as I could get without touching the edges of the crack in my wall and focused my vision the best I could. I could sort of make out a bedroom. Looked like any old bedroom to me. As the edges sharpened I could see it was a young girl's bedroom. The biggest indicator was the fact that there was a young girl there, facing away from me. She was kneeling in front of the bed like a child praying, her long red hair falling to about the middle of her nightgown. Although this was one of the strangest situations I had ever been in and I wasn't sure what proper conduct would be for it, I felt uncomfortable watching a little girl pray. It felt like an invasion of privacy, so I tried to announce myself. "Amelia, can you hear me?"

"I've been waiting, like you told me," the girl said, but not to me. A strange prayer, I thought, but she clearly couldn't hear me calling her name. It was rude to listen, I'm sure, but what would you have done? "You said you'd take me with you... You said to pack a bag... It's been months."

She sounded so sad. I wasn't sure what I was seeing, but I wasn't sure I wanted to know anymore, because the girl sounded the kind of sad that I feel every day, like the magic had been sucked out of life and left her with a day-to-day routine. I don't know how I could tell, I couldn't even see her face. But I could feel it-her sadness was akin to my own.

"Please come back for me, Raggedy Man. Please come back, strange doctor... I'm scared."

My heart slammed against my chest at the sound of those words. They wouldn't have made sense to anyone who'd never begged out loud for their doctor to come back to them while they're all alone. Hell, they didn't entirely make sense to me, but just hearing such familiar words was enough for me to forget about any reason I had for not touching the crack and reach my hand out toward it. I don't know if I'd reached out to comfort the girl, or if I'd been wishing for a miracle to take me to wherever she was, but the second my fingertips brushed the surface of the crack, I was pulled forward into it with a force I couldn't have stopped if I had changed my mind. Realistically, the crack was nowhere near wide enough for me to fall into, but then again realistically, a crack like this couldn't possibly exist. And so I fell forward like Alice down the rabbit hole. The _whoosh_ing feeling in the pit of my stomach was similar to the jolt of a vortex manipulator and everything was happening so fast and then suddenly everything was just dark.


End file.
